The Eye of the Chained God

by Bassingthwaite, Don

  “And how exactly do we do that?”

  Kri’s smile faltered. “I have the key. Tharizdun said the one who came would help to turn it.”

  “Me?” asked Albanon. “I don’t know anything about Tharizdun’s will. What am I supposed to do?”

  “You have power,” Kri said.

  “Fire. Lightning. If I want to use it. And it hasn’t exactly been predictable so far. How does that help us?”

  “You can manipulate magical flows more directly than that. I’ve seen it. In Moorin’s tower, you fed power back into the prison ward that the Voidharrow formed around Tharizdun and burned the Voidharrow away.”

  “I think this would be subtler than that.” Albanon sat down on a hunk of broken statue. “Why can’t we just burn the Voidharrow with fire or the light of the gods, though? Vestapalk is laired in something he calls the Plaguedeep. Belen—she’s a Fallcrest guard who was possessed by Nu Alin until Tempest and I drove him out—saw the place in Nu Alin’s memories. It’s the crater of a volcano west of the Vale, but Vestapalk has transformed it somehow with the Voidharrow. There’s a concentration of it there, a great pool that Vestapalk wallows in.”

  Kri sucked in his breath. “Then he’s gone further in his consumption of the world than I thought.” He sat down, too. “Burning will only destroy the portion of the Voidharrow your fire or my radiance consumes. Some of it might escape. If Vestapalk has already turned it against the rocks and stones of the world, it could have reached into the Underdark already. We need to destroy it completely. Drawing out Tharizdun’s will should do that. Wherever the Voidharrow is, it will be affected.”

  “What about the Abyssal Plague and the plague demons?”

  “That’s harder to say. Without the Voidharrow’s power, the plague will lose much of its virulence, but the demons are creatures of both worlds now. If they survive the destruction of the Voidharrow, they may still be able to infect others. Though probably not as easily.”

  Albanon blinked. “They won’t be cured?”

  Kri gave him a blunt look. “Those infected have changed, Albanon. The Abyssal Plague has done its work on them. They are what they are now.”

  A sour taste came into Albanon’s mouth. “But they were all people once. Can’t we bring them back? You burned the Voidharrow out of me.”

  “You had just been turned. There was still time. The people that the plague demons were are dead. Could you bring back the dead from any other plague?” Kri held up the crystal lantern. “We feed the gods, Albanon.”

  “Tharizdun is a god, too. Do we feed him?”

  “Even Tharizdun—but the Chained God gives us a chance to fight. Without freedom and change, where would we be? Exactly where the other gods want us.”

  Albanon stared at the old priest for a long moment, then asked, “Do you really believe that?”

  “If I didn’t, I would still be Ioun’s pawn.” Kri looked directly into Albanon’s eyes. “Tharizdun wants the Voidharrow stopped. You want Vestapalk dead. Look into your heart. Has this ever been about the Abyssal Plague? Shara has sworn to kill Vestapalk for what he did to her friends and father. You have sworn to take revenge on Vestapalk for almost turning you into his exarch. If the only way to stop the plague required leaving Vestapalk alive, would you take it?”

  Albanon wanted to say yes, but he couldn’t. All the dead of Fallcrest and Winterhaven. Immeral. Splendid. All those dead and lost beyond the Nentir Vale because of the Abyssal Plague. He laid them at Vestapalk’s feet.

  “Will destroying the Voidharrow kill Vestapalk?” he asked Kri finally.

  “He is its host. It imbues and empowers him. It’s part of him now. I don’t believe he could live without it.”

  “Then I think that’s all I can ask.” Albanon looked at the old priest. “I’ll work with you—assuming we can figure out exactly how to separate Tharizdun’s will from the Voidharrow.”

  “We’ll find a way. We worked well together before.” He held out his hand.

  Albanon shook his head. “We worked well before you betrayed me,” he said. “Before you broke my mind. I’m not going to trust you again, Kri. Don’t act like you’re my mentor.”

  Kri let his hand fall. “Fairly spoken,” he said. “We have a common interest, nothing more.” He sat back once again. “So where do we begin?”

  Kri might have been mad and a traitor, but Albanon had to admit it was good to talk to someone who really understood magic again. Tempest was intelligent, but a warlock’s understanding of magic was different from a wizard’s, received through pacts and bargains with supernatural creatures rather than hard study. And while Kri was a cleric, drawing his magic from divine sources, he had served the god of magic and knowledge for most of his life. Changing his allegiance to Tharizdun had not taken away what he’d learned as Ioun’s priest. It was frighteningly easy to forget that Kri had tried to kill him and bring a banished god back into the world.

  They began with generalities: what resources they had to work with, past instances each had read about that might be vaguely similar to their situation, spells and rituals that might aid in what they needed to accomplish. They moved to specifics: how could two intangibles such as will and hunger combine into a material form in the first place? Kri found chalk or something like it in the ruins while Albanon brushed aside rubble and conjured more light. Soon the floor of the chamber was covered with notations and sprawling diagrams, and Albanon had told Kri everything that he had seen and experienced, including Vestagix and even his own shame at Winterhaven. It reminded Albanon of the happy days of his apprenticeship and long conversations with Moorin—or even of the much shorter period when Kri truly had been his mentor.

  None of it, however, got them any closer to an answer. There was always something missing. A gap in the diagrams. A hole in their knowledge. “If the will of Tharizdun is the key to destroying the Voidharrow,” Albanon said finally, “we’re fumbling for the lock like drunks in the dark.”

  “To use the languages of alchemists,” said Kri, “we need a catalyst. Something to facilitate the magic.” The priest rose stiffly and bushed the dust from his hands. “We need elements of an exorcism. And, since the Voidharrow will surely resist having Tharizdun’s will drawn from it, an abjuration to hold the two apart. There has to be something else, though. A wedge to split them. A spindle to wind up Tharizdun’s will.”

  Albanon stared at the complex swirls of the pale inscriptions that surrounded them. They were like the numbers and formulas that had unlocked his magic before. He could almost feel the madness pushing at his mind. For the moment, he let it be. It was strangely energizing. He felt more alive and alert than he had in days. In his mind’s eye, he could picture the threads of magic that Kri would weave, and which he would in turn pluck and twist, empowering the ritual. But it was exactly as Kri said: they needed something more. Something to turn the key.

  He let out a long breath and scrubbed his hands over his face. His mind might have been alert, but his body was weary. Between the excitement of his discussions with Kri and the dark silence of the ancient cloister, it was almost impossible to tell how much time had passed, but his grumbling stomach told him it had been long enough.

  “Do you have any eggs left?” he asked Kri. “Or should we go up and investigate the peryton carcass on the ledge? It looked at least partly cooked when we left it.”

  The priest made a face. “I’m sick of peryton. I’d like a little change before we resort to it. Do you have a scrap of anything else in your pouches? Dry bread? Old cheese? Yesterday’s sausage?”

  “I might.” Albanon dipped his hands into the pouches on his belt, digging through the esoteric bits and pieces that wizards tended to accumulate.

  His fingers closed on something cold and hard, with edges sharp enough that they nicked him—and in his memory, he was standing again in the study at the top of Moorin’s tower as Immeral challenged him to confront Vestapalk and the Abyssal Plague rather than hiding from what that confrontat
ion might do to him. He remembered thinking he needed a talisman, something to remind him of the importance of what he had to do. He’d chosen a remnant of the battle that had taken place in that very room.

  Albanon drew his hand from his pouch and held out his talisman for Kri to see. A tapered oval of red stone—roughly broken, slightly crystalline, and no bigger than his thumb—rested on his palm. Kri’s eyes opened wide.

  “When Tharizdun sought the seed of change,” the priest said reverently, “he reached through the Living Gate to retrieve it. When the other gods bound him, they forced him through the gate. When cultists of the Chained God summoned the Voidharrow to our world, they used a fragment of the Living Gate to open the Vast Gate. The founders of the Order of Vigilance shattered that gate but kept a piece of it to study, until I used it to open the Vast Gate again in Moorin’s tower.”

  “And that was shattered, too,” said Albanon. He turned the stone between his thumb and forefinger. “A fragment of a fragment of a fragment.”

  “That has known the touch of both the Chained God and the Voidharrow. In Sherinna’s tower, I think Tharizdun called to me through it.” Kri smiled. “Well done, Albanon. We have our catalyst.” He reached for the stone.

  Albanon closed his fist around it. “No,” he said. “It stays with me.”

  For an instant, Kri’s face twisted into a mask of fury, like a child throwing a tantrum. Then it was past as the priest forced himself to remain calm. “You don’t trust me?” he asked. “After what we’ve just accomplished? I’m not going to try anything. I still need your help to work the magic.”

  “And if you find a way around that?” Albanon put the stone back into his pouch. “You said Tharizdun told you one would come who would help turn the key. I’m keeping this until that key has been turned and the Voidharrow has been destroyed.”

  Kri’s expression turned cold. “As you will. The words of Tharizdun are fulfilled.” He raised his face to the shadows of the ceiling. “Chained God! Patient One! We are ready. Deliver us from this place!”

  Albanon felt a little bit sick. “That’s it?” he asked. “That’s your plan for getting us out of here—”

  From the darkened stairs, rolling up from the depths of the cloister, came an echoing boom. Albanon spun around to stare. “What was that?”

  “Deliverance,” said Kri. He picked up the crystal lantern and headed for the stairs.

  The boom came again, the sound of something heavy striking stone. Albanon ran after Kri. The lights he’d conjured in the chamber winked out as he left them behind. He caught the priest on the stairs just as the boom rolled up for a third time. “If I was anywhere else, I’d say that someone was trying to knock down a really big door.”

  “It might be.”

  “You said there was no way in or out!”

  “I said I didn’t think the dwarves came in and out, but they must have gotten in at some point. A door is the simplest explanation.” Kri shook his head. “You have to use your wits sometimes.”

  Albanon resisted the urge to strike the old man from behind. “So there is a door!”

  Kri shrugged. “I assume there is. I didn’t look for one. Tharizdun told me you would be coming. Why would I leave?”

  A scream of frustration built in Albanon’s throat—then died as he considered Kri’s words. “Either that actually makes sense,” he said, “or I’m going as mad as you.”

  “One doesn’t rule out the other,” said Kri.

  The booming continued in a regular pounding rhythm as they descended the stairs. Albanon saw doorways opening into other chambers and passages—the cloister must have been vast once. Even as the sound guided them farther and farther down, Albanon felt no urge to go exploring in the madness-tainted place.

  The deeper they went, the louder the echoes became. They filled the stairs with a roar of sound. Albanon could feel them in his belly. Even pressing his hands over his ears barely muffled them. The sound was so mind-numbingly loud that it took several turns of the stairs before he realized it had changed. He grabbed Kri’s shoulder.

  “We’ve gone past!” he shouted. “It’s coming from above us now.”

  The priest nodded and they turned around. It took trial and error before they found that the sound came rolling out of one of the side passages. Kri led the way into a long, high room lined with the moldering remains of barrels. A humble storeroom, except that one of the featureless walls trembled visibly with each impact. Albanon watched grit cascade down the wall as old mortar was pounded into dust. Loosened stones sagged, revealing the shape of a pair of arched stone doors behind. Hope and the anticipation of escape rose in Albanon.

  Then the booming rhythm ceased. The only sound was the faint hiss of falling dust.

  “They stopped,” said Albanon. He lowered his hands from his ears and waited for the sound to start again.

  It didn’t.

  “No!” Albanon ran to the wall and slammed his fists against it. “No, we’re here! Tempest? Shara? Anybody?” There was no sign of a response. He turned back to Kri. “Why would they stop?”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Cariss had sustained the worst injuries of any of them—deep gouges where the peryton’s talons had gripped her—but once other Tigerclaw warriors had caught her drifting body and brought her back to the clearing, even she wasn’t willing to wait longer than it took to have her wounds cleaned and bandaged. “Albanon saved me,” she said. “Do I honor his actions by hesitating when he is in danger?” She even took charge of the wizard’s staff from Uldane.

  In less time than it had taken to battle the perytons, they set out across the valley for the scorch-marked cliffs. The Tigerclaws led the way, bounding through the forest with the grace and speed of animals. Shara, almost as at home in the wilds as the barbarians, and Uldane, very nearly as fast, followed close behind. Quarhaun, Tempest, and Belen came after, moving as quickly as they could.

  Roghar brought up the rear, the shield and heavy armor that had saved his life on many occasions encumbering him as he ran. In a short dash, he might have kept up with one of the others. Sprinting in armor was part of his training routine, but one only intended to get him quickly around a battlefield. Over longer distance, he would only exhaust himself.

  When Tempest and Belen slowed to keep pace with him, he just waved for them to keep going. “I’ll get there,” he shouted. “The trail’s impossible to miss.”

  “You shouldn’t be walking alone,” Tempest called back.

  “We just killed the largest predators in the valley. What’s going to bother me?” He banged a gauntleted fist against his breastplate for emphasis.

  Tempest and Belen exchanged a glance, then the tiefling shrugged and they carried on. Just ahead, Quarhaun paused to give Roghar a long, thoughtful look. Roghar curled his lips and glared back until the drow had gone on with the two women.

  He dropped to his knees in a soft clashing of metal. Alone! Truly alone for the first time in two days. Letting the shield slide from his arm, he pulled off his right gauntlet—and almost sobbed.

  The abrasion inflicted by Vestagix’s tail had grown into an oozing wound. His scales were shriveling and falling out, leaving the raw flesh beneath exposed. The veins almost seemed to be rising to the surface. Red and pulsing, they snaked out from the wound to push aside healthy scales. Roghar could feel the infection, too. From the tips of his fingers almost to his elbow, his arm burned with a slow, aching heat.

  And was it is his imagination or had his left arm started to burn as well? He didn’t dare take his other gauntlet off to look.

  Roghar clamped his hand around his arm just below the wound and squeezed as if he could cut off the flow of tainted blood. “Holy Bahamut, Righteous Dragon,” he prayed just as he had morning and night since Winterhaven, “I beg you to heal this wound!”

  The sluggish stirring of divine energy was the same. It answered his call, a new warmth caressing his skin, but he knew in his heart that it wasn’t the same as it h
ad once been. When he opened his eyes, the oozing wound had dried and scabbed a little, but it was still there. His arm still burned.

  Bleakness settled over him like a heavy cloak. He’d tried to hold it back for several days, but what difference had it made? The Abyssal Plague had him in its grip. Prayer would not drive it away, only hold it back. And it was only getting worse. The night before, stumbling and exhausted in the forest, he’d briefly felt … something … inside him, like a nightmare intruding on his waking mind.

  How long would it be before he lost himself entirely and became one of Vestapalk’s demons?

  No, Roghar told himself, he wouldn’t let that happen. He picked up his shield and bent his head before the holy symbol on its surface. “If you can’t heal this plague, Bahamut, then give me the strength to fight it. Let me be myself until Vestapalk is dead, then I will surrender to my fate.” He clenched his burning, infected fist. “I swear it.”

  He didn’t wait for his god’s response—it would hurt too much if there wasn’t one. Pulling his gauntlet on again, he rose, picked up his shield, and followed the trampled path of the others through the forest.

  By the time he’d caught up to them, they’d reached the foot of the towering cliff. From so close an angle, the ledges where the perytons had nested were nearly impossible to make out. The black scorching from the brilliant burst of light stood out, though. Roghar joined Turbull, Belen, and Tempest as they stood staring up at it. “Where is everyone?” he asked.

  “Looking for the best route of ascent,” said Belen. “Uldane thinks there should be a way up that he can climb. Quarhaun says it’s insanity but he’s looking, too. The drow has almost as much feel for stone as a dwarf.”

  “Coming from the Underdark, he would.” The words came out gruffer than he’d intended—as so many of his words seemed to lately. It earned him a sharp glance from Tempest. He turned away rather than meet her gaze.

  The trees grew thinner close to the base of the cliff, but the underbrush became heavier. Hardy vines clung a short way up the stone face itself. Here and there, they’d been torn back to expose the rock beneath. Where the vines had protected it, the surface was pocked by potential handholds. Farther up, however, it was weathered almost smooth. Uldane would need to find a more sheltered spot or a vein of some hard stone that might have resisted the weather.